Friends with Benefits

September 20, 2006

Danger! Danger! The Produce Section Again!

Ok, maybe I understand the organic food craze now.

I was raised in Indiana. If you don’t know where the state is located, it’s next to Chicago. My childhood memories are marked by one image: farmland. When I stared from the window of my family’s 1994 maroon Buick Century, I often hoped I could be a farmer, too.

Obviously, I’m an intern, which keeps me away from the cornfields of the Midwest and huddled in the corner of an office. My dreams of owning a John Deere tractor and wearing overalls disappeared when I was blinded by the rewards of drinking coffee and learning how to google. However, my mind is rooted to agriculture, and today, I discovered a shocking reality: farmers use products that can kill me.

It’s true. All those large machines that spray mist on crops aren’t just full of water.

Acephate.Fenvalerate.Iprodione.While these all sound like ingredients used in low-budget meth labs, these might be on your green beans or carrots.In my never ending quest for the latest and greatest in food news, I stumbled upon http://www.foodnews.org/. This site gives the dirty details of what fruits frequently contain a high number of pesticides, what these pesticides are and what they do.In some cases, they can cause brain damage.In others, they act as carcinogens – who knew a piece of celery could be a cancer stick?

Obviously, this news may not be as drastic as I make it.There’s an element of excitement in fear, and I needed this blog entry to hit home like the six o’clock news.There’s no need to throw out all of your vegetables or worry that the banana you are eating could be your last.

Bill Buford: HeatHeat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany- A perfect Pig Roasting Pigmailion story from desk jockey to line cook in New York's Babbo restaurant

Mark Kurlansky: Salt: A World Historyfinally finished this sodium saga and while it's slow in many places, it's still a fascinating read about the history of salt and how different cultures in the world have lived and died for this simple element. Other food origins revealed as well. It's no Sidney Sheldon but give it a try.